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Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential. Brian Ashcraft
Читать онлайн.Название Japanese Schoolgirl Confidential
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781462914098
Автор произведения Brian Ashcraft
Издательство Ingram
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After the show, team member Rino Sashihara—decked out in a frilly light blue tutu, Mickey Mouse jumper, and white cowboy boots—ices down her calf. “There’s a mosquito in here,” she warns, “it stung me.” Then adds in English, “Oh my god!” gesticulating wildly. Rino has been an official member of AKB48 since October 2008. Ditto for her schoolgirl compadres Moeno Nito and Tomomi Nakatsuka, who are also taking a break between shows. “I was a fan of AKB48 a long time before I auditioned,” the sixteen-year-old Rino says. “I love idol music. Onyanko Club were super!” She and Tomomi gush about following AKB48 before joining, while Moeno is frank: “I’d heard of them, but I wasn’t a big fan or anything.” She was, instead, into Gothic rock and decorating her nails.
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“There aren’t just lots of girls in AKB48, there are lots of different types of girls,” Rino says. Tomomi, decked out in a track suit and sneakers, chimes in. “Yeah, there are cute girls, beautiful girls. Everybody is different. I think that’s really what makes the group unique.” Tomomi, for example, likes manga and video games, and Rino’s hobby is eating udon noodles. Scan the profiles of other AKB48 members and you’ll find girls into professional wrestling, horror movies, or anime. It’s an idol smorgasbord where fans can find at least one idol to his or her taste. The music might be what draws folks in as listeners, but it’s the girls who turn them into fans.
“The big difference between AKB48 and other mainstream idol groups is the interaction with the fans,” Tomomi points out. “We try to make a connection with the crowd,” Moeno adds. With weekly performances, TV shows, radio programs, recording and video shoots, the AKB48 girls are busy. “Sometimes it’s hard to always be smiling and happy,” Rino says with a wide grin. “Not that I’m horribly depressed—the furthest thing from it!” Sharing these feelings and personal issues with fans is something idols tend to avoid. It’s too much information, and a total buzz kill for the escapism that idols buffs want.
In the wake of World War II escapism and hope was provided by a trio of schoolgirls dubbed “Sannin Musume” (“three girls”). Hibari Misora, Chiemi Eri, and Izumi Yukimura made their name covering jazz standards and belting out entirely new Japanese creations. The three starred in a couple of MGM-style musicals together, and the biggest star, Misora—the Shirley Temple of Japan’s post-war war era—captured the ears of a nation with her 1949 smash hit “Kappa Boogie Woogie.” The East-meets-West ditty was about a mythical Japanese creature getting his boogie woogie on.
During the 1950s, American G.I.s and Japanese greasers alike rocked out to local cover bands doing their best Elvis impressions at live venues across the country. Covers soon gave way to original tunes and the first Japanese language rock songs. When rockabilly started attracting thugs and bikers, music producers decided they needed a new sound and a new look. Out went the leather, pompadours, and uncontrolled hip wiggling. In came clean-cut kiddies and choreographed dance routines. The “idol age” was dawning.
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Thank the French for helping popularize the word “idol” in Japan. In 1964, the comedy film Cherchez l’idole hit Japanese theaters, and Sylvie Vartan’s “La plus belle pour aller danser,” the movie’s theme song, sold a million copies. As a wave of Gallic tunes from young, pretty French chanteuses were snapped up, cover versions of the Franco hits were released to capitalize on the trend. What the burgeoning Japanese idols lacked in French sang-froid, they made up for in cute.
It was in the 1970s that girl idols would truly come into their own. This new generation of Japanese popstars had grown up in a very different period from their parents. It was an era free of Japanese imperialism and American firebombing: the Olympics had taken place in Tokyo in 1964 and the World’s Fair was held in Osaka in 1970. The future was now, and girlish dreams of becoming a pop star were possible. Unlike the matinee idols of the 1950s and 1960s, idols during the 1970s were created on television in living rooms across the country. On talent-search TV shows like A Star Is Born!, stars really were born. Schoolgirls like Momoe Yamaguchi, Junko Sakurada and Masako Mori were the top three idols of the day and the media dubbed them “The Schoolgirl Trio.”
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Yamaguchi was only thirteen when she showed up to her first recording session in a sailor-style school uniform. She raised eyebrows in 1973 with songs like “Unripe Fruit,” peppered with raunchy lyrics such as “You can do whatever you want with me,” and “It’s alright to spread rumors that I’m a bad girl.” The suggestive songs she sang were in sharp contrast to her age, and the more conservative acts of other idols. The thrill for male fans was in the power of suggestion and her coquettish schoolgirl image.
JAPAN RECORD
For these idols, image was everything, and everything was controlled as the idol grew into her role. The clothes. The hair. The likes and dislikes. Idols were the girls girls longed to be, and the girls boys longed to be with. According to media specialist Tatsu Inamasu, idols appear to be very pure, but they are actually doing something very impure: trying to get money from people’s pockets. “The fans understand that the act is a lie,” says Inamasu in his book Idol Engineering, “but they enjoy it. The whole thing is a fantasyland game.” It doesn’t matter if the idol can’t sing. To be worthy of idolatry, the singer’s talent doesn’t have to be perfect—she has to be. It’s easier to develop a strong attachment watching a pure, awkward young woman become an accomplished performer than simply seeing the final product. Fans want someone to root for, to cheer on. There’s an emotional investment and gradually an I-knew-her-when nostalgia emerges.
The so-called Schoolgirl Trio had hit on a nerve. Throughout the 1970s idols appeared in print magazines and on record covers in their sailor suits—like on Nana Okada’s 1975 top ten single “Jogakusei” (Schoolgirl). In the following decade the schoolgirl trend continued with the likes of TV star Tsukasa Ito, and her 1981 debut album Shojo Ningyo (Girl Doll). The title couldn’t have been more apt. Ito was thirteen years old and, of course, appeared on the cover wearing a sailor-style uniform. Her name was scrawled on the album cover in childlike writing and when she appeared on music programs to promote the album everyone knew what she would be wearing.
A perfect schoolgirl storm was brewing. And it hit hard in 1985 when Fuji TV’s late night program All Night Fuji—which had been using college-aged girls as eye-candy—hosted a special on high school girls. The program’s producers created a schoolgirl band dubbed Onyanko Club (Kitty Cat Club) with a logo of a pussy cat bent over, flashing her bloomers. The bonus pun? “Nyan,” is Japanese for “meow,” and “to do nyan nyan” was 1970s slang for sex. None of this was lost on the show’s predominantly male viewers.
The group’s sound was heavily influenced by early 1960s American girl acts like the Ronettes, but instead of the Wall of Sound, Onyanko Club had the wall of schoolgirls. At their debut, there were eleven of them. Their first song, “Don’t Make Me Take Off My Sailor Suit,” was a top five smash, with blunt lyrics that didn’t beat around the bush—the song contains doozies like “I want to have sex before all my friends.” If the subject matter did happen to be lost on listeners, the “nyan nyan” refrain in the background would have clued them in. All this was coming from a gaggle of regular looking schoolgirls who didn’t exactly ooze sexuality—which is exactly what the fans found so damn charming.
Even